Employee involvement (EI) activities were established by management to create more meaningful work for employees and to make companies more competitive. What is missing is a clear method to link the problems of an organization with the appropriate EI activity. (JOW)

Senge states that knowledge-based organizations require distributed leadership based on philosophy, attitudes and beliefs, skills and capabilities, and tools (artifacts). McLagan replies that his assertions require deeper, more soulful reflection to bring the concept to life. (SK)

This brief guide to total quality management (TQM) includes definitions, a review of the history of the concept, profiles of five principle experts, and a discussion of TQM jargon. (SK)

Institutionalizing a vision for diversity should include (1) commitment to serving students' perceived needs; (2) seeing through the lens of others' experiences; (3) moral leadership from teachers; (4) a sufficient pool of support and goodwill; and (5) focus on students first. (SK)

Regardless of their content, employee-development activities can engender common interests or mutuality with benefits to employer and employee. They promote lifelong learning, flexibility, increased motivation, commitment, loyalty, and hence effectiveness. (SK)

Survey of 25 British civil engineering firms revealed informal and unstructured learning systems, limiting designers' opportunity to gain feedback about their designs. A more systematic learning culture was recommended for project-based industries such as construction. (SK)

Case studies of four British entrepreneurial organizations reveal the dimensions of learning in small organizations: ability to network, assimilate experience and opportunities, reflect on strategies and mistakes, and assess resources. Results suggest that existing organizational learning theories are more appropriate for large firms than…

Theories of situated learning and distributed cognition are used to support emerging relationships between learning and working. The nature of work evolves from being predictable and deterministic to being more contingent and idiosyncratic. Models of employee development are examined. (Author/JOW)

Examines three theses: (1) work teams should be analyzed as object-oriented activity systems; (2) the nature of teams depends on the type of production in which they are implemented; and (3) fluid forms of collaborative work organization are displacing stable teams. (SK)

Diversity is a multidimensional construct that affects all members of an organization. The relationship between diversity and organizational performance is not automatic. Diversity must be promoted, supported, and managed effectively to reap its benefits. (SK)

Two case studies involving story telling show how management competence is affected by subjective interpretation and by the context of management behavior. Management and organizational development should thus consider how contexts and relationships operate to prevent development of situation-specific competence. (SK)

Assessment of learning organizations is not a scientific but a political endeavor, better served by heuristic measures. These measures assess conditions in which there is high probability that learning is occurring, enable participants to assess the learning climate, and make the learning climate a focus of inquiry. (SK)

Suggests that investigating the play of texts in the organizations where professionals do their work should further knowledge about professional communication. Examines the development of communicative practices at a national production company that relied on texts to mediate its organizational activities across geographically dispersed locations…

Includes "The Origins of Organizational Development"; "Restructuring Bureaucracy"; "The Emergence of Organizational Culture and Symbolic Intercourse"; "Organizational Development and the Art of Connoisseurship"; "Managing Change and Organizational Development"; "Skills, Values, or Impression…

Presents an account of how one company went completely virtual--no office at all--and reaped the eventual rewards. Describes implementation processes, communication challenges, and customer reactions. (JOW)